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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Luke is Here!

Our little man has finally made his debut. Luke was born July 10th at 9:41pm after only 6 hours of labor.

So far motherhood has been rewarding, tiring and completely worth it! Luke is a good baby, only really cries when he's hungry or dirty. He loves being held by his daddy, and rocked by his mimi. He's already changed so much in the past 2 weeks, and I can't wait to see how he grows and develops. He is my little muffin, the 2nd love of my life :)

Saturday, July 10, 2010

I have Ankles!

This is going to serve as a public service announcement to all my family and friends.

So, I know that a common thing that comes with pregnancy is swelling of your feet and ankles, mostly due to the weight of the baby compressing the veins in your legs and not allowing all the blood flow to return to the heart as efficiently as it should...
but i did NOT expect my ankles to look like tree trunks this past Thursday! I couldn't tell where my calves ended and ankles started... they put new meaning to the word "cankles". And my feet looked like super-thick pancakes. The beautiful arch in my foot was gone, along with all the space between my toes.

Then to add insult to injury, a complete stranger approached me at the library, and told me she couldn't help but notice my feet were swollen.... (by this time they looked like little loaves of bread rising around the straps of my flip flops). Ya, how embarrassing.. and she told me that that I should eat more celery because it would really help the swelling. You can imagine how I responded to her unsolicited advice. I gave her a cool "oh really, i've never heard that before." which in pregnancy is translated as, "bug off lady! it's none of your business how my ankles look! what gives you the right to come up to a complete stranger and comment on the way her legs look?! geez, get a life!"

So of course, the swelling did concern me, because sudden swelling of the legs could mean high blood pressure, which is very dangerous in pregnancy. So, I went to Kroger, took my BP, and of course it was high, not off the charts, but 15pts higher than it should've been. So, i freak out (a little), thinking they're going to induce me, and that poor luke is in distress, and my ankles are so big!

My doctor tells me to go ahead and go in to the office to get my pressure checked (often times the machines at the stores are inaccurate). So I go in, they check my urine, bp, weight... and all is okay.

so, hmmm.... i put on my thinking cap... what in the world could be causing all this swelling??!!

Then the lightbulbs turn on! I spent yesterday at the mall, and what did i have to eat at the mall?? why Chinese food and french fries. And if that wasn't enough, I finished out my day with pizza and ice cream and brownies.

So, out of curiosity, I looked up the recommended sodium intake for women. The Mayo Clinic recommends 2,300mg per day for healthy people. Then I looked up how much sodium I took in: and that was funny! Not funny Ha ha, more like shocking, sad funny. Here it is...

Food Sodium (mg)
Chow Mein 1060
Mixed veggies 530
Mushroom Chicken 780
Veggie Eggrolls 540
Sweet & Sour Sauce 180
French Fries 140
Triscuits 280
Slice Sausage Pizza 830
Slice Everything Pizza 970
Vanilla Ice Cream 60
Toffee Ice Cream 75
Brownie 82
TOTAL: 5527mg

In a few hours, I managed to eat double the recommended amount!!!! Yikes! And this doesn't count cereal for breakfast, or any of the snacks I can't recollect due to selective pregancy amnesia.

So, I went on a rampage and took the advice we always give to our heart patients at work.
Walk, limit your sodium, drink more water (this sounds counter-intuitive, but helps to flush out the sodium) and wear compression stockings. This is all recommended by the Mayo Clinic as treatment for edema (swelling).

I am happy to announce that as of last night, I have ankles again! beautiful, slim, womanly ankles! and space between my toes! And I'm 2 lbs lighter which means I had alot of extra water hanging out.
So ladies (and guys), learn from my mistake, watch your sodium intake. I've counted calories, but never kept track of my sodium. It's crazy to see how much sodium food has. Another reason to cook at home. It allows you to monitor the amount of salt that goes into your food, not to mention the amount of fat, sugars, etc.

My only regret is I didn't take pictures of my feet. They were something else :) I hope to never see them like that again.